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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25290778">If All Else Remained</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyVader/pseuds/LadyVader'>LadyVader</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Thor (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, Grammarly is my Co-Pilot, Love Confessions, M/M, Not Beta Read, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Endgame</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 05:46:43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,660</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25290778</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyVader/pseuds/LadyVader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Endgame: Thor finally gets his brother back but has to fight to keep him.</p><p>(entirely inspired by/ripped off from the Firefly episode 'Safe')</p><p>Written for thorkiweek4 on twitter for the prompt - Love Confession.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Loki/Thor (Marvel)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>156</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>If All Else Remained</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>If All Else Remained:<br/>
</b>
</p><p>Thor staggered through the trees, his lungs burning, his legs shaking and cramping beneath him as he desperately strove for speed.</p><p>
  <em> Not Again. Not Again. </em>
</p><p>His heart beat in frenzied time with his echoing thoughts, branches catching and dragging on his skin, ripping through in places, his body still recovering from the ritual.</p><p>He’d given so much -- <em> needed </em>so much to give everything that he could, everything he had -- to get back the one thing he lacked.</p><p>A mystic on Knowhere had followed Thor, uttering nonsensical divinations that he had tried to block out with the rotgut he, Drax and Rocket had been swilling since they’d arrived, but her repeated intonations of ‘<em> he floats, merely sleeping, adrift in stardust, ready for the sun to shine again’ </em> had left Thor shaken enough to buy an hour of her counsel.</p><p>Significantly lighter of pocket, he’d refused to let his hopes soar, hiring one of the larger scavenging troupes to accompany the <em> Benatar</em>, gritting his teeth as they approached the site of the destruction of the <em> Statesman</em>.</p><p>His people had still been there, frozen mere moments after their deaths, his subjects, <em> Heimdall </em>all trapped in a static cluster, barely drifting between the debris of the ship, too far from any gravitational sway to do more than float and wait for him to come back for them.</p><p>He’d not been able to face the job himself, coward though he knew it made him. He waited until the collection crew had gathered the Asgardians into the main hangar and had them pilot the ship to a young sun, burning bright and hot, where he saw to their funeral rites and prayed over their bodies as he released them into the cleansing fire, knowing their souls were safe in Valhalla.</p><p>He hadn’t allowed himself to return to the <em> Benatar </em>until the job was done, and the last of his subjects had been given the funeral they had deserved these past five or so years, thoroughly ashamed of himself even now for his motives having nothing to do with the task he’d finally completed.</p><p>With shaking hands and a still broken heart, he’d returned to his borrowed quarters aboard the ship, entirely unmanned even as he found exactly what he’d hoped to find there.</p><p>Loki lay atop his bed, cold and seemingly lifeless but for the promises of a suspiciously powerful (and costly) mystic.</p><p>Gamora and Nebula had known precisely who to look for, having known Loki during his brief time under Thanos’ control, and had undertaken the task of collecting his body for Thor with no more than a long look at each other, likely with the horrors of Thor’s always palpable grief resting heavily over their owned strained but true sisterhood.</p><p>The shadows of Loki’s blood still trailed beneath his nose and lips, and Thor had known a brief urge to immediately eject this imposter corpse from his quarters, his brain entirely unable to accept this broken, frozen shell as the vibrant, tantalisingly wicked body of his brother, even as his heart howled and told his arms to clutch at him and drag him close.</p><p>He might have stayed standing in the doorway to his room all night, torn and bleeding inwardly from the horror of facing this particular ghost once again, had Mantis not been curled over Loki’s form, her antennae aglow as she blinked in wonderment.</p><p>“He dreams,” she’d whispered, awed by a sleep so deep she could only just feel him beneath it. “He dreams of light and heat and… And <em> you </em>.”</p><p>Her eyes had somehow been even more enormous as she’d gazed up at Thor.</p><p>“You used to be so <em> beautiful</em>, why did you let them take your <em> eye </em> away?”</p><p>A minor squabble had broken out between Drax, Rocket and Mantis then as Drax found himself honour bound to point out Thor’s still not inconsiderable beauty (now that he had started taking better care of himself once more) but Thor hadn’t been able to do more than stare at his brother laying -- not his body, not<em> dead </em> -- sleeping on his bed.</p><p>He didn’t leave his side for so much as a moment as they flew back to Knowhere, watching as the cold of space left his brother, and guilt pummelled Thor’s every tender place he had, knowing Loki had been waiting for him all the while he’d sat and drowned his grief on Earth.</p><p>The mystic had, for no smaller sum than the entirety of Thor’s cut from the last four jobs he’d helped the Guardians with, agreed to come aboard to see Loki and to advise Thor on what might be done for him.</p><p>“He has such <em> power</em>,” she’d wheezed with such a covetous look that Thor had let sparks dance across his skin in warning, “to hold oneself back from the brink of death is already an enormous undertaking, but he has used his power to tether himself to this world to such extent that the well has run all but dry.”</p><p>She’d looked at Thor with hungry, assessing eyes, smiling with stained teeth as she seemed to stare all the way to the root of him, taking in the deep wellspring of his own seidr.</p><p>“He cannot bring himself back, will sleep until he peters out -- emptied of power, devoid of time -- that is… unless someone were to throw him a lifeline and simply <em> pull </em> him back to them?”</p><p>Thor had paid her his cut of the last<em> eight </em>jobs he’d done with the Guardians, hope burning in him so heavily that he’d had to leave the ship for a while until his lightning stopped scorching those stood to close to him.</p><p>He’d bid Rocket take them to the greenest, most<em> alive </em>place in the system and had retreated to his room to centre himself, his eyes fixed upon his prize if only he could summon strength enough to win the day.</p><p>There had been a time in Thor’s youth -- before his lightning had fully come in -- where his fertility magic was his greatest skill, and he had delighted in the incantations his mother taught him that left flowers blooming in his wake, with barren couples naming their children in his honour everywhere he went.</p><p>He’d never had the fine control that his mother and Loki had wielded though, his power had been too consuming, too tied to his own feelings for him to be able to hold it at bay long enough to direct it. Then had come Mjolnir and battles fit enough to appease even the most war-hungry spirit, and so Thor had never overly mourned his lack of skill, until Vanaheim. </p><p>A tainted fruit shipment from the Cimmerians had resulted in a blight that had devastated the lushly green and abundant realm, their own seidr masters had been infected by the cursed fruit, leaving them unable to turn back the scourge as it swept through their fields and trees.</p><p>They had begged Asgard for help, and Thor remembered his mother’s tears as the high council had sat so long debating whether they could risk possible cross-contamination by sending Thor to the land of her birth, that it had seemed likely that any help they might send would be far too late to save the realm. </p><p>Loki had hissed, never more dangerous than when someone disrespected their mother, and had not only stolen the ancient texts on fertility rites but had even managed to shield them both with his magic so well that they had been able to sneak aboard one of the ships bound to Vanaheim carrying <em> aid </em> for them (a futile gesture when their world was dying before their eyes.) </p><p>There had been some hue and cry when they’d landed, bursting out of their hiding place for just long enough for Thor to seize Loki and take to the sky with Mjolnir, but they’d soon been en route to the heart of the most afflicted forest, far beyond the reaches of his father’s men.</p><p>Thor had, in all honesty, been terrified. He’d thought Loki somehow expected him to learn what was in the books and save Vanaheim despite his difficulties with the more intricate rituals, convinced he was going to find he’d lost his powers with the attempt just as the Vanir had, still willing to try at least for all it had frightened him.</p><p>Instead, he’d found himself pouring lightning into the ground across what once had been a beautiful clearing, his fingers dug deep into the dirt in accordance with Loki’s instructions for a transference rite. He’d screamed in agony as his power left him, pouring through the earth and into his brother who screamed in turn, body jerking as Thor’s raw power saturated him, his skin blistering in places as he chanted the incantations that would cleanse the land until they each fell, empty and unconscious, to the ground.</p><p>They’d awoken in Asgard, under Eir’s watchful eye, Heimdall having kept a close enough eye on them that they had easily been retrieved from the verdant, peaceful (if somewhat scorched) grove where the Einherjar had found them. It had taken days for them to wake, and months for each of their seidr to return to them, but Vanaheim was green and lush to this very day.</p><p>Thor had stared at Loki’s drained and seemingly lifeless body aboard the <em> Benatar </em>and thought back on that place, full of life and promise, and had known just how to replenish his brother’s stores if only he could achieve it without the ancient texts.</p><p>They’d alighted on a small moon, rich with deep, dark forests and rolling green fields where Groot had once come to get over a case of youthful cabin fever, and Thor had felt powers he’d not used in years tug at his insides, intermingling with his growing hope.</p><p>The crew had gone to trade for provisions on one of the nearby moons, leaving Thor to complete his ritual in a spot far enough from the small townships scattered between the forests that he’d thought there could be no objections at all. To be honest, he’d rather thought they might be grateful later on, having discovered their lands even richer with promise after their visit.</p><p>He’d felt confident enough to tell them to go, asking only that they be ready to find them both drained and exhausted but otherwise alive on their return, and had graciously agreed to let Mantis stay -- just so long as she watched from a safe distance -- unable to resist her obvious enthusiasm for waking the ‘dreaming one’.</p><p>Thor had brought his mother to mind, her endless patience and faith in him as he’d restored dwindling crops as a child, pictured his father as he stood across the grass in his mind’s eye telling Thor he was stronger than he’d ever been, recalled the sense of his own self breaking fully loose as he harnessed Stormbreaker to his will, magnifying his inner storm where Mjolnir had only channelled it and had felt power surge beneath his skin as he kneeled before his brother’s quiet, waiting body.</p><p>Sinking his hands into the rich, moist earth, Thor had let himself focus on the memory of Loki; his smile as he’d caught that stopper on the Statesman, his eyes as he’d sworn undying fidelity to Thor under that headless<em> bastard’s </em>beady eye, and -- finally -- he let himself listen to the memory of Loki’s steady incantations as he channelled Thor’s power into himself.</p><p>It had been a millennium since he’d performed the ritual, but Loki had snarled and belittled him into better applying himself to his studies of seidr once he’d felt just how much power Thor had been wasting, and now it was but the slightest effort to alter the incantations to temper the transport of his seidr into Loki via the earth beneath their feet.</p><p>He decanted everything he’d had into Loki; his love, his power, his grief, the ache of the years between them and all that had happened, everything that had occurred in Loki’s absence, filling the gaps where Loki should have been with the longing of millennia yet to come, and the last thing Thor saw before he surrendered to the darkness, had been Loki’s limp form abruptly stiffen and drag in a long, deep breath.</p><p>He awoke to partial darkness, his eyes opening to the now empty spot where his brother had lain, Mantis’ high scream of <em> WAKE UP </em> still reverberating in his skull.</p><p>Loki was awake, Loki wasn’t himself, <em> was </em>himself -- awake but dreaming, processing, scared, <em> elated </em> -- Mantis said, but also<em> gone. </em></p><p>Thor<em> hurt</em>, his body screaming at him to let it blackout, to let him rest but Mantis said that Loki was<em> goneGoneGONE </em>and so Thor had dragged his mind all the way awake to listen in rising horror to what she had to say.</p><p>Loki had awoken, only an hour or so past, bursting out of sleep with a gasp and a cry and a flash of green magic that reached all the way to the sky, Mantis said.</p><p>It was beautiful. It was dangerous. It brought the villagers.</p><p>They listened to Loki speaking, almost always speaking -- unable to stop, words falling out of him faster than they could be made to make sense -- but Mantis had felt him, what he’d been trying to say, heard him exclaiming at the joy of the air in his lungs, the green of the trees and grass, the warmth of the earth, his love and pain when he looked on Thor, green sparks crackling up his arms.</p><p>Demon, the villagers had said.</p><p>Possessed, they had cried.</p><p>Dangerous. Wrong. Deadly.</p><p>And then they had taken him away, Mantis tried to stop them, had radioed for Rocket and Quill and the others with no response as they’d pushed her back, told her to mind her own business as though Thor hadn’t lain there in seeming need of aid.</p><p>They were hungry for violence, eager to punish, Mantis said, her bright eyes widening with Thor’s anguish as well as her own as it crashed over her.</p><p>Took him. Will kill him.</p><p>Gone. Again.</p><p>So Thor ran, forced his aching, agonised body forwards and ran in the direction she said they’d taken him, panting and sobbing and already certain he’d be too late -- as always -- to save his brother.</p><p>
  <em> Not Again. Not Again. </em>
</p><p>Thor staggered over roots and fallen branches, choking on his own grief and terror as his body threatened to give out on him completely, his blood weak and diluted without his power seething through it, his muscles shaking as he tried to force them to carry him further, <em> faster</em>, until finally, he began to see light through the trees.</p><p>Firelight.</p><p>“Oh, gods please <em> NO </em>…” Thor choked, begging of any higher power that might be listening as he burst out of the woods into a cleared area, wide enough to have a dozen or so small cabins dotted about around a central point where the villagers lined up with lit torches, waiting as several men built a pyre about where Loki smiled amiably, tied to a stake at the heart of the would-be bonfire.</p><p>“STOP,” Thor bellowed, feeling something in him snap at the force of it, “YOU MUST STOP THIS.”</p><p>A large man turned to watch Thor’s approach, stood with a large tome beneath his arm and holding a somewhat more ornate torch than the others held.</p><p>“Wait, please <em> wait </em>!” Thor managed as he carried on, running forward to climb midway up the pile, his hands held out, shaking and useless to him, weak and without his lightning, as he pleaded with the gathered crowd. “Please, I am sorry if he has frightened you, but my brother is unwell and means you no harm and has done nothing to you -- you need not be bothered by his presence ever again -- only let me take him from here, and we will leave your world this very night!” </p><p>The large man regarded him, dressed finer than the rest, his clothes drawn tight across his belly where the rest looked half-starved, and Thor felt something in him shrivel, abruptly certain he was not facing a fair or reasonable man.</p><p>“Thor,” Loki said, soft and pleasant as though he had simply stumbled across him lazing in their mother’s rose garden. “It’s good, the cage inside me can’t hold it back, I feel it rising -- oh, like sunshine, sunshine in my skin -- and it was so cold when I was dead,” a rumble ran through the crowd, half uneasy, half delighted, thirsty for bloodshed. “Dead for so long, cold and dark and dead and quiet and sleeping, dreaming of you--” Thor sobbed as he listened, unable to help himself as his lungs screamed for air even as the rest of him scrambled up the pyre, stumbling and scrabbling for handholds as Loki went on, “--and your teeth and your eyes in your face, I like them, even the wrong one, because they’re yours and I’d kill for anything of yours, kill anyone for you, die for you, <em> died </em> for you, dead for you, <em> alive </em> for you, here for you, Thor, came back for <em> you</em>, Thor.”</p><p>Loki managed to stop himself just as Thor reached him, smiling at Thor the way he used to when Thor would cup his nape and call him his favourite brother, no matter how many times Loki reminded him that he was his<em> only </em>brother.</p><p>“Loki,” Thor exhaled, his heart soaring into his throat, momentarily allowing the joy of having Loki back -- alive again -- suffuse him, tears dripping off his chin as he moved to cradle Loki’s cheek.</p><p>“Hello brother,” Loki said softly, and the green light of his seidr rippled over him as he shuddered at Thor’s touch, some of Thor’s own magic sinking back into his skin with the action.</p><p>“DEMON,” intoned the large man with a sort of gleeful sincerity that chilled Thor to the bone, “this body is cursed, and his soul can only be purged with <em> fire </em>.”</p><p>Thor’s strength was gone, his power weeks away from resurfacing as Loki’s body used it to replenish his own power, and it was all Thor could do to stay upright, swaying, as he fell back on the only tools that remained to him.</p><p>“<em>Please</em>,” Thor said. “Please. He’s not possessed, good people, merely troubled after a long period of… <em> unconsciousness. </em> He’s still recovering and is somewhat addled by the process.” Thor dropped his hands to casually pull at Loki’s bonds, heavy manacles with a sturdy lock holding Loki tight to the pike. “Please don’t judge him by his words or behaviour, he is neither mad nor possessed, we simply come from another world, and if you’ll only stop this we’ll be on our way, and you need never concern yourselves with us again.”</p><p>The large man showed his teeth, but Thor knew better than to think it a smile.</p><p>“The Fates command that we destroy such evil. He is a demon, and he<em> must burn</em>. There can be no other way.”</p><p>Two men stepped forward, lit torches held aloft. </p><p>“We have no quarrel with you, good sir. My men saw you in the forest near depleted by this fiend, come down from there now and let us free you of his influence.”</p><p>Thor fought down the now-familiar sense of rising panic, focusing on the smell of the fresh-cut wood around him, felt the precarious tilt of it stacked beneath his feet as he took slow, deep breaths and moved down the pile, his hands upheld, entreating.</p><p>“Good people, please you must<em> listen </em>to me; this man is my family, my brother, he was taken from me by a murderous madman, and I have only just found him and found him<em> broken</em>,” Thor’s voice strangled in his throat, his heart pounding mercilessly in his chest as he gasped and choked, old grief just as powerful even with Loki standing just behind him, hale and somewhat whole. “He is<em> everything </em>to me, I know you’re afraid of him, but he’s just… he’s just my… mine. He’s <em> mine </em>.”</p><p>Thor swallowed, an ancient truth he’d long resisted rising to the surface of his thoughts to tumble carelessly from his tongue, the freedom of accepting it so giddying that Thor couldn’t help but speak it again.</p><p>“Please? He’s <em> mine</em>, and I’m his<em>, </em>and we belong to each other.”</p><p>He looked back up the pile to where Loki scoffed and rolled his eyes, words spilling shrilly from him on a laugh, “He says it, tells it now to strangers after I would have burned worlds just to prove it, show it, be allowed to say it, ridiculous, scared small boy standing in a man’s shoes begging to be allowed to keep his pet, his prize, his heart, <em> my heart</em>, my love <em> Thor </em> … keep me, <em> please keep me </em>…”</p><p>Loki dipped his chin, laughing softly to himself even as more tears poured from Thor’s eyes at his brother’s words, his fists clenching at his side with the need to hold Loki close and to<em> hurt </em> anyone who might try to prevent him from doing so.</p><p>He turned back to the townsfolk and their leering, predatory leader.</p><p>“<em>Please</em>,” he said again, the word already as familiar as breathing, “if you take him from me now I’ll never survive it, I’ve had to live without him before and it’s… it’s<em> not life</em>. I need him, I -- I <em> love </em> him.”</p><p>Something in Thor’s chest broke free, and he took a shuddering breath, as though the admission had restored a partial portion of his strength to him and he looked back at Loki over his shoulder, gazing desperately up into his shining eyes.</p><p>“I love you,” he said again, astounded by a truth rising in him that had needed to be spoken for a thousand years or more, “you’ll always be my brother but… I love you. I<em> love </em>you… don’t leave me again.” Thor looked back down to the crowd below, searching for even a glimpse of clemency amongst the stony faces, “Please don’t take him from me.”</p><p>“Light it,” the large man said.</p><p>Thor snarled, ignoring Loki’s nonsensical words -- <em> run far, run now, don’t look back </em>-- and threw himself down the pyre to kick the first man away as he advanced with his torch, turning to face another only to be struck heavily across the shoulders with a heavy staff as more angry young men broke free of the crowd, armed and all but glowing with their belief of righteousness.</p><p>Staggering back against the pyre, scrambling back out of range of the vicious, swinging staff, Thor called on every ounce of strength he had within him and used it to crawl up the slipping, poorly stacked slats of timber, his head ringing from his lack of seidr and the blow he’d taken, his blood pounding painfully in his veins as he struggled back to Loki’s side.</p><p>Hauling himself painfully to his feet, Thor panted and leaned into the heavy spike holding Loki in place, looking from Loki’s pale, now tearstained cheeks to where the crowd stared up at them with a joint aggressive, hungry gaze, all of a mind that Thor couldn’t hope to change.</p><p><em> Not Again</em>.</p><p>He tried to call the storm, but spots swam before his eyes, and he almost fell back down the pyre with the effort of it.</p><p>“Oaf,” Loki told him lovingly, his smile as bright as his tears in the closing firelight, “best and worst always, belong to your bones, your flesh and mind, had to stab your heart to make it mine.”</p><p>“I love you too, brother,” Thor whispered.</p><p>He looked down, saw the crowd had grown in number, more torches now, all lit, all eyes watching greedily, thirsty for unwarranted vengeance.</p><p>Thor sought out the large man amongst their number and nodded, wrapping shaking arms about his brother.</p><p>“Do as you will,” he told him dully and watched the man’s smile grow as the flames came closer.</p><p>Pressing himself as tightly to Loki as the pike would allow, Thor tucked Loki’s head to his throat, turning his own face into the dark, sweet-smelling locks.</p><p>“Breathe deeply, Loki. We will be with our parents soon,” he took a deep shuddering breath, the tang of smoke already heavy on his tongue, “and if not, at least we will be together.”</p><p>“<em>Thor</em>,” Loki choked against his skin, “we must <em> go</em>.” Thor took another breath and prayed that the smoke would take them before the fire reached them. </p><p>There was a sudden rush of sound and a bright, raw light too clear to be the flicker of fire.</p><p>“Well now, would you look at this pile of crap with his wannabe murderers and their barbeque going on -- I’d say we got here just in the nick of time,” Rocket’s voice mocked, loud and clear from over the <em> Benatar’s </em>tannoy system and Thor jerked his head up to see Gamora and Quill standing at the back of the crowd, each with large weapons pointed at the large man and his followers.</p><p>“What does that make us?” Quill asked over-loudly, and Gamora cocked her weapon next to him, saying with deathly seriousness.</p><p>“Big damn heroes, Quill.”</p><p>Quill powered up his weapon so that it cast laser sights over the gathered townspeople, and Rocket’s gleeful cackle echoed over the trees.</p><p>“Aint we just,” Rocket crowed, the Benatar’s guns glowing brighter than any sun and Thor was falling down, down, down into the darkness.</p><p>++</p><p>Thor woke up.</p><p>He ached like he’d gone back for a second round with the star forge at Nidavellir, and he could feel his body trembling with just the trauma of not being unconscious anymore, so why was he awake?</p><p>He jerked as someone seized him by his armour and slammed him back against the bed.</p><p>“You idiot, you fucking <em> imbecile </em> Thor, how could you, how <em> COULD YOU </em>?” </p><p>“Loki,” Thor breathed even as his eardrums and ribs begged for mercy, struggling to sit up, “you’re really here, you’re <em> alive </em>…”</p><p>“Yes and a fat lot of good that would have been IF YOU’D DIED FOR ME, <em> YOU UTTER MORON </em>.”</p><p>Thor blinked, still dizzy from lack of rest and the weight of his relief.</p><p>“I didn’t try to die <em> without you </em> brother, that was all you.”</p><p>Loki turned on the spot, yanking at his hair in a way Thor hadn’t seen since they were children and Loki hadn’t been able to master his spellwork.</p><p>“You’re not supposed to die for me <em> at all</em>, you blithering halfwit!”</p><p>Righteous indignation rose in Thor despite his fatigue.</p><p>“You mean the way you did for me, <em> TWICE </em>?!”</p><p>Rounding on him, Loki’s hands clenched into bone-white fists at the front of Thor’s armour once more, as he shrieked, “Only because I can’t actually live <em> without you</em>, you impossibly selfish bastard!”</p><p>Thor heaved a startled breath or two, choked on a shadow of something like his brother’s name, and jerked Loki down on top of him, kissing him frantically.</p><p>Long, clever fingers raked through Thor’s short hair and over his scalp as Loki hissed and cursed against his lips, struggling to get a knee down on either side of Thor’s hips, biting at Thor’s lips and sucking his tongue as he fought for dominance over his own shaking body.</p><p>“Love you, love you<em> so much</em>,” Thor gasped between kisses and Loki snarled, turning his head to nip at the broad column of Thor’s throat.</p><p>“Yes, yes, I heard you before you sentimental oaf, just <em> KISS ME </em> would you, we can talk fucking wedding plans later just-- <em> mmph--” </em> </p><p>Then there was no further conversation, simply two souls reuniting by way of greedy hands on warm skin and soft whispers of adoration, with one large-eyed and well-meaning -- but otherwise somewhat invasive -- girl sat outside their door, her antennae aglow as she warmed herself by the light of their rediscovered love and the bright future that lay before them.</p><p><strong>Fin</strong>.</p><p> </p>
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